February 7, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
If I respond to the question with "You got to be joking" or Wrong Tool For the Wrong Thing" I will not be scored and will not get any points for that response.
That is not necessarily correct. Maybe the question is intentionally using the wrong tool for the job and they want to know if you know that and have the courage to suggest a better alternative and be able to back it up.
I have been asked some of the most absurd questions ever. Here is one. I was referred to a small consulting company by a good friend. We will call him "Max". He told me this company was looking for somebody and secured me an interview. I met the guy at a Starbucks a few blocks from this office. This seemed a little bizarre but whatever. He showed up about 10-15 minutes late, just before I was going to leave. Already this is a rather strange interview. After we met and he joined me at the table with his cup of coffee he just sat there and stared at me for at least 30 seconds. No movement at all...I am really kind of wondering what I got myself into here. He then asks, "So, are you as smart as Max?". I figured out where this was going quickly. I sat there and stared at him for almost a full minute to the point where he was starting to twitch a little. I then unloaded big long string of gibberish about it depends on what we call smart, what the topic is etc etc etc. After the initial BS the interview went very smoothly. I ended up working there for 5 years but I will never forget how bizarre that one was.
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Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
February 7, 2014 at 2:50 pm
Sean Lange (2/7/2014)
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
If I respond to the question with "You got to be joking" or Wrong Tool For the Wrong Thing" I will not be scored and will not get any points for that response.That is not necessarily correct. Maybe the question is intentionally using the wrong tool for the job and they want to know if you know that and have the courage to suggest a better alternative and be able to back it up.
Sean, I responded to this as one who has sat on the other side of the table, the side that asks those kinds of questions. I did not write the questions but have been told in every case that if the person does not attempt to respond to the question as posed, the value of the response is zero. In every case for each of the panels the idea is will the person answer the question as posed, and after, once they have made a good faith effort to answer, they then may question the validity of the question.
A response where both bases are covered tells more. First I will do as you ask showing humility, respect, and showing that I will take direction no matter how silly it might seem to me; but I will also question the question showing that I have a bit of spunk and am not intimidated even if the job or being hired for the job depends on it.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 7, 2014 at 2:57 pm
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
Sean Lange (2/7/2014)
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
If I respond to the question with "You got to be joking" or Wrong Tool For the Wrong Thing" I will not be scored and will not get any points for that response.That is not necessarily correct. Maybe the question is intentionally using the wrong tool for the job and they want to know if you know that and have the courage to suggest a better alternative and be able to back it up.
Sean, I responded to this as one who has sat on the other side of the table, the side that asks those kinds of questions. I did not write the questions but have been told in every case that if the person does not attempt to respond to the question as posed, the value of the response is zero. In every case for each of the panels the idea is will the person answer the question as posed, and after, once they have made a good faith effort to answer, they then may question the validity of the question.
A response where both bases are covered tells more. First I will do as you ask showing humility, respect, and showing that I will take direction no matter how silly it might seem to me; but I will also question the question showing that I have a bit of spunk and am not intimidated even if the job or being hired for the job depends on it.
M.
That sounds to me like some people need to find more work to do. They are obviously spending way too much brain power over analyzing interview questions.
What is the point of the score? Do they offer positions based on score alone or does the score somehow figure into the salary offer? I know the hiring process is not an easy one. I have been on both sides of the table about equally. What you are describing sounds like I would want to run out of the interview screaming. It really sounds like they want to remove all personality from the process and give a standardized test.
_______________________________________________________________
Need help? Help us help you.
Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
February 7, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Sean Lange (2/7/2014)
That sounds to me like some people need to find more work to do. They are obviously spending way too much brain power over analyzing interview questions.What is the point of the score? Do they offer positions based on score alone or does the score somehow figure into the salary offer? I know the hiring process is not an easy one. I have been on both sides of the table about equally. What you are describing sounds like I would want to run out of the interview screaming. It really sounds like they want to remove all personality from the process and give a standardized test.
Short answer is "Government".
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 7, 2014 at 3:43 pm
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
...If we give some wisecrack as a response, the potential employer might see us as arrogant and a non-team player.
Or just not serious about the position. If the oddball questions are posed during an interview, you can ask about the oddball questions. I think I would do that after giving a straight answer. Wisecracks are not an option. If it is some sort of timed and scored written test, well, I guess what you do depends on how badly you still want/need the job.
I regard an interview as a two-way process. I interview them while they interview me. I wouldn't reject a job because of an oddball question, but I would want to understand what they were doing. I do sometimes reject jobs up front when I see patterns in the job ads that tend to go with a messed-up work environment (then again; sometimes I don't-maybe the ad is just poorly written). With that kind of pre-weeding, so far, oddball questions haven't been an issue.
February 7, 2014 at 4:03 pm
Megan Brooks (2/7/2014)
I regard an interview as a two-way process. ...
This and the rest of the post is excellent. It is a two way street, both are seeing if there is a correct fit. Both should be able to ask questions as they see fit and both should evaluate both the question and the response.
It is one thing to have a silly or strange question being intentionally asked, but to tell you the truth, some of the time while sitting on the other side of the table the responses from the person being interviewed have been so funny it has been very hard to keep a straight face. It is even funnier when those responses have not been intended to be humors.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 7, 2014 at 6:57 pm
Megan Brooks (2/7/2014)
I interview them while they interview me.
That is the best way to look at an interview.
I can understand the oddball question being asked. But I put it in the same as the requirement to have a college degree for most IT jobs.
Yes, there are some jobs in IT that it is probably needed like when Fujitsu hires only college degreed people to develop the next gen of hard drives. But a decent 19 year old with a tech background from her parents could probably be a sys admin with no degree in site.
If you look at my resume and see all the IT stuff I have done, but say you want a degree I'm going to ask question as "Are you the right fit for me?" I also don't want to be a manager. If you want me to be a manager and a tech -- that isn't my position. Relatively short time project team lead I can deal with.
So the "stupid" question won't turn me off -- but I'm going to question is the company a fit for me just the same as a degree requirement.
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
February 7, 2014 at 10:05 pm
Knut Boehnert (2/7/2014)
"How would you fill a coffee cup in T-SQL?"
I wouldn't because that's RBAR. I'd write the code to fill a million coffee cups according to size and, if there were only one coffee cup to be filled, it would automatically handle that. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 9, 2014 at 4:25 pm
IMHO oddball questions are not reliable or valid means of determining a candidates competence or fit for a job.
A few weeks ago I read a paper by some sociologists about the stress of searching for work in different cultures (call me an infovore!), specifically making a comparison between looking for work in the US and looking for work in Israel. According to this research people found job search much more stressful in the US because you have a culture that emphasises personality over competence
February 9, 2014 at 6:38 pm
mtucker-732014 (2/9/2014)
IMHO oddball questions are not reliable or valid means of determining a candidates competence or fit for a job.
I couldn't agree more.
A few weeks ago I read a paper by some sociologists about the stress of searching for work in different cultures (call me an infovore!), specifically making a comparison between looking for work in the US and looking for work in Israel. According to this research people found job search much more stressful in the US because you have a culture that emphasises personality over competence
Not quite true... at least, not for me nor where I work. We want good people all the way around. They have to fit the team and that means being competent enough to actually get work done. In order to get work done, you have to communicate with people not only to get the requirements but to get some help on the tough spots. For sure, when you first work in a new environment, everything is a "tough spot" because of esoteric knowledge of the systems required and documentation alone doesn't answer all of those questions. We don't want some arrogant jerk or some lame sot that won't be able to communicate without pissing everyone off. There's no reason at all why someone can't be both competent AND a good team member. As on the 8 Ball League I used to play on, there's a huge difference between a good shot and a good player and both can be experts at 8 Ball.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 9, 2014 at 7:11 pm
Jeff Moden (2/9/2014)
We don't want some arrogant jerk or some lame sot that won't be able to communicate without pissing everyone off. There's no reason at all why someone can't be both competent AND a good team member. As on the 8 Ball League I used to play on, there's a huge difference between a good shot and a good player and both can be experts at 8 Ball.
I can understand and agree with that sentiment so much. We have a senior level programmer that always comes off as an arrogant jerk. He was in charge of redeveloping a software package into more of a .Net program. There was a flaw that a simple fix to the deployment package would fix. (Put 127.0.0.1 in the default config file so it wouldn't auto scan for other servers.) He said that employees missing the that setup change when installing hundreds of them should be considered incompetent and should be retrained or fired. The failure to make the change could have caused a HIPAA violation that could be in the $#00K+ range. He couldn't grasp that his minor f***-up could have bankrupted the company. It took a senior level CxO type to get it through to him that he was wrong.
And that wasn't the first time for that type of attitude. Unfortunately he is still with the company.
The upside is that we were bought out and he is now back to the same level as the rest of the programmers on the new SW compared to the 5+ years ahead he had with the old software. That has taken him down several notches.
So a team player that fits in is valuable. His extra skills may be important, but not being able to learn from the more knowledgeable people with specific experience is a wast of time.
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
February 9, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Jeff Moden (2/9/2014)
mtucker-732014 (2/9/2014)
A few weeks ago I read a paper by some sociologists about the stress of searching for work in different cultures (call me an infovore!), specifically making a comparison between looking for work in the US and looking for work in Israel. According to this research people found job search much more stressful in the US because you have a culture that emphasises personality over competenceNot quite true... at least, not for me nor where I work. We want good people all the way around. They have to fit the team and that means being competent enough to actually get work done. In order to get work done, you have to communicate with people not only to get the requirements but to get some help on the tough spots. For sure, when you first work in a new environment, everything is a "tough spot" because of esoteric knowledge of the systems required and documentation alone doesn't answer all of those questions. We don't want some arrogant jerk or some lame sot that won't be able to communicate without pissing everyone off. There's no reason at all why someone can't be both competent AND a good team member. As on the 8 Ball League I used to play on, there's a huge difference between a good shot and a good player and both can be experts at 8 Ball.
Jeff, I think you are picking up "social skills" where mtucker said"culture". They are different things. Maybe he was thinking of a real problem: Someone who wears the right fraternity ring from Ivy League or the right class ring form Annapolis (USNA) or West Point (USNA) is "cultured", anyone who doesn't may be competent but isn't cultured, and hence is much less employable. I dont like it at all, and I don't like it's equivalent in the UK or in the rest of Europe (despite having schooling that puts me on the "cultured" side), because it often keeps good people out. It doesn't happen everywhere, not even in half the companies that employ people like you and me, but it does happen far too much.
Tom
February 9, 2014 at 10:01 pm
To me, there's not much difference, Tom. The end result at work is the same.
And, I agree... ring knocking is generally not a problem at the types of companies that I've worked at.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 10, 2014 at 11:27 am
"How many snow shovels sold in the US last year?"
Approximately 97% - the rest are stolen. The theft rate is typically low on snow shovels.
Mark
Just a cog in the wheel.
February 11, 2014 at 7:41 am
Miles Neale (2/7/2014)
Sean Lange (2/7/2014)
That sounds to me like some people need to find more work to do. They are obviously spending way too much brain power over analyzing interview questions.What is the point of the score? Do they offer positions based on score alone or does the score somehow figure into the salary offer? I know the hiring process is not an easy one. I have been on both sides of the table about equally. What you are describing sounds like I would want to run out of the interview screaming. It really sounds like they want to remove all personality from the process and give a standardized test.
Short answer is "Government".
LOL that certainly explains some of the over analyzing and worrying about strange trivial things that don't amount to anything concrete. 😀
_______________________________________________________________
Need help? Help us help you.
Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
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